Footwear-mounted engagement methods have been used in cycling, skiing, snowboarding, rowing, and numerous other sports, to attach a user to a device for increased power and/or control.
Engagement of footwear-mounted cleats to bicycle pedals, in particular, have been notoriously difficult for a number of reasons. The cleat is mounted to the underside of a rider's shoe sole and is thus hidden from view. Likewise, the pedal assembly, being mounted to the underside of the rider's shoe sole, is also obscured from view by the shoe during the engagement process. Thus, engagement of a rider's shoe to a pedal assembly requires the rider to blindly align or engage the cleat to the pedal, relying primarily on tactile feedback and most typically while the rider is still in motion.
To exacerbate the difficulty with engagement, bicycle pedals are rarely in a fixed position and spin freely on the cranks which also spin freely on the bicycle. The common tendency to look down at the pedals to facilitate engagement is both awkward and potentially dangerous, as it distracts the rider from paying attention to the road or trail and may cause the rider to wobble into traffic or hit a fixed object.
Other factors in recent years have contributed to the difficulty in engaging footwear mounted cleats to pedals. For example, many pedals and cleats have gotten smaller over the years and this has made the target area for aligning the cleat to the pedal significantly more difficult.
What is therefore needed is an improved cleat and pedal assembly that permits blind engagement between the pedal and cleat that does not require precise alignment of the two components to facilitate engagement.